Qualcomm Snapdragon Processor: The Top Products of 2010

A new processor that offers phones more than 1 GHz of speed and almost-all-day battery life.

While today's app-hungry superphones require almost as much speed as a desktop, the chips that power PCs consume enough energy to drain a phone battery in minutes. Enter the Qualcomm Snapdragon, a processor that offers phones (such as the EVO 4G) more than 1 GHz of speed, as well as almost-all-day battery life. Competitors Nvidia and Apple have followed with their own 1-GHz chips, but Qualcomm continues to push the envelope, with 1.3-GHz processors coming out this year and upcoming dual-core mobile chips that run at 1.5 GHz.